The Chatter
by Ballerina Terminator
Summary: Sometimes, you discover that you can still learn new things about the people you are closest to, and they, in turn, can still learn new things about you.


**Dear everyone,**

**Welcome to the 6th Story in my ongoing saga of my two favorite Avengers. I hope you like it. I've been working on several of these stories at once, but I wanted to get this one to you in time for St. Valentine's Day. It is my present for you because I care. I personally do not care to be coy about things, and I will tell you honestly, that what I want most for my Valentine's Day present is a review. So, if you could find it in your heart to write just a few lines about what you did and/or did not like about the story when you get to the bottom of the page, I will cherish your words forever the wonderful gift that they are. Bet you can't guess what I'm going to ask for on my birthday in two weeks when I post the next story! ;-)**

**All my love,**

**Ballerina Terminator 3  
**

**XOXO**

The Chatter

It wasn't as though either Clint or Natasha has exactly been overjoyed about the assignment from the very beginning, and it wasn't as though they had any say in the matter. Ultimately, they decided that, even if they had known what to expect, it wouldn't have made much of a difference, and they agreed that, if they had known ahead of time, it would have made them more miserable from the beginning. Despite all of this, it was hard for them to see the blizzard as anything but an insult being added to an injury.

The training exercise had already been rescheduled three times, and it would have been rescheduled a fourth time – and probably a fifth and sixth – if Fury hadn't finally put his food down on the matter. There were very few agents who would have been allowed to continue on active duty after a certification had expired, and it would only have been for a single mission, possibly a second mission in the event of an emergency. Agents Barton and Romanoff had been on four. Director Fury had already turned a blind eye to it for as long as he could, but there was only so long one could maintain voluntary blindness with the World Security Council always looking over one's shoulder.

So, despite their looming case load, Hawkeye and Black Widow were pulled from the duty roster and locked into Winter Survival Recertification Testing. Complaints from the agents in question were ignored, and formal protests lodged by their handler were overruled. Agents Barton and Romanoff would have to meet requalification standards just like everyone else, and no, Director Fury didn't care if it _was_ just a glorified camping trip, Agent Coulson would just have to reassign his other agents to fill in the gaps in the roster and make do for the next two weeks. February had already begun, and if they waited any longer it wouldn't be winter anymore.

Much to their chagrin, Natasha and Clint found themselves not in the Bahamas hunting down a wealthy businessman who was laundering money for a drug cartel as originally planned, but instead they were dropped in the middle of nowhere in the north-western part of the continental United States with minimal supplies, very limited ammunition, and no food. As it transpired, at the time they were deposited at the drop point designated as their starting location, the area was experiencing record high temperatures for the month of February, but this fact did nothing to alleviate the sting of losing their plum assignment.

The original certification process for survival training included several days of intensive instruction followed by a battery of practical assessments. Each agent had to demonstrate a proficiency in a myriad of skills; trap-making, fire starting, and identification of edible plants were just a few examples of an exhaustive list. Recertification, on the other hand, involved taking a team of two to four agents and dropping them in the wilderness with very little, giving them two weeks to reach a prearranged safe-house. Failure to reach the terminal destination in the allotted time frame would usually result in having to go through the recertification a second time. Regulations dictated radio silence during the exercise but contact could be made in the event of an emergency.

Coulson was not precisely alone in his opinion that the survival recertification was like a camping trip, however, it did offer field agents a chance to hone skills that were rarely called upon, but potentially vital. Just because it was more peaceful than the normal job description didn't mean it was either easy or comfortable.

Once Clint and Natasha had come to terms with the loss of sandy beaches and clear, blue waters, the first ten days were actually quite lovely, all things considered. Following the rudimentary map they had been provided, they made excellent time as they crossed the mountainous forest. In addition to the unseasonably warm weather, they had a distinct advantage over most of the other field agents when it came to obtaining food. As each agent was allowed their primary weapon with severely limited ammunition, Hawkeye had only a handful of arrows to work with, but unlike bullets, arrows had the virtue of being reusable. As a result, hunting for dinner was only a matter of Clint laying eyes on edible prey. After the first few days, Clint began to let Natasha practice with the bow, and with time and some help, she was able to show notable improvement from her initial haphazard attempts. Although neither would have been willing to admit it to their superiors, they found the trip almost relaxing.

Naturally, their improved outlook on the whole exercise evaporated when the massive blizzard bore down on them at the end of the tenth day without warning.

"Romanoff, I don't know how your feet manage to radiate _cold_, especially through _two_ layers of socks, but if you don't get them off me before my calf gets frostbite, I will kick you out of this tent," Clint said emphatically.

"Damn. I didn't think you'd notice," she grumbled, reluctantly pulling her feet away from the one heat source for miles. While their tent was a tribute to the ingenuity of SHIELD's Research and Development Department, including such features as moisture resistance and it's extremely compact travel size, in Natasha's opinion, it left a lot to be desired when it came to insulation. Technically, the light weight covers they had were excellent insulators, but as Natasha didn't seem to have much body-heat to retain, it wasn't helping much.

"Woman, you are a heat sink. I'm not even sure you're a mammal."

"That's not fair," she snapped defensively.

"Really? Prove me wrong," he challenged. "Produce your own body heat."

After a few seconds of consideration, Natasha gave a defeated sigh that was nearly inaudible over the raging winds outside the thin tent walls. "Damn."

"You're Russian! Isn't a certain amount of resistance to the cold a necessary survival trait in the motherland?" he teased. Only Clint could get away with a comment like that, and he knew it. That was why he said it.

"Right, now that you mention it, I did forget to bring the compulsory handle of vodka that I'm supposed to carry around to help reinforce stereotypes," she said dryly, slipping into a very pronounced Russian accent. "Sure, drinking it in this weather would actually increase my chances of hypothermia, but at least I'd think I was warmer."

"Do you ever drink vodka?" Clint wondered. "I think the most I've seen you drink at one time was a glass of wine with dinner."

"In further defiance of expectations, I don't drink much of anything," Natasha informed him. "I don't like having my senses interfered with. I find it… unsettling."

He had to chuckle at the magnitude of the understatement. She found it a bit more than 'unsettling' for her to feel that she had less-than-complete control over her own mind or to think that she couldn't trust her senses. That was why it practically took an act of Congress to get her to take painkillers any stronger than a couple of aspirin. She was SHIELD's most notoriously difficult patient. Now that he considered it, the more surprising thing was that Natasha would even consent to the one glass of wine with a meal. He was willing to bet she'd even check the alcohol content before she had any.

"What the hell are you laughing at?" she asked, suddenly feeling eager to remove the focus of the conversation away from herself. "In all these years, I've never seen you drink anything harder than root beer."

When Clint failed to respond for a few moments, Natasha suddenly worried that she had said something wrong. She was aware of him shifting uncomfortably before he replied.

"My dad drank a lot, and things could get…" He trailed off before starting over. "Let's just say that I'm not sure you'd like the person I could be if I drank. Odds are really good that I have a genetic predisposition for alcoholism, and I'd rather not find out the hard way."

Natasha had, for a long time, understood that Clint's father had been a violent man. It was hard to think otherwise, considering what had happened, but her partner was amiable, good-humored man who had a soft spot a mile wide. It was disconcerting to think that he ever worried about becoming something different under the influence of alcohol. "You don't think you could ever really turn out like him, do you?" she asked, unable to reconcile the idea of associating Clint with thoughtless cruelty.

"I'd do anything to avoid it, especially after what he did to my mom."

"You think she'd still be alive?" she asked sympathetically.

"It's possible, but," he conceded, "he didn't need to be drunk to be mean. Unless he's had a miraculous personality transplant, he's probably still just as charming."

"Wait, he's still alive?" Natasha exclaimed, genuinely shocked that she had had been unaware of this fact, but then she immediately kicked herself for being so boorish. "I mean, you told me what happened to your mother, but you never said about your father, so I just assumed," she tried to amend before she realized that she was making things worse. "I'm sorry. I'll just shut up now."

"No, it's fine," he said dismissively. "I understand. He didn't get the death penalty. It was actually life without parole. He's rotting away in some state penitentiary; I don't know which one. They don't give you the details when you're nine, and I didn't care to ask when I got older."

"By that point, you'd run off to join the circus." She still marveled at the fact that an eleven-year old ward of the state had wormed his way into the company of a traveling show, even if there were a number of families within the group.

As it had turned out, young Clint was even luckier than he had believed at the time because there were two or three adults amongst the party who took the time to insure that he received enough of an education that if he ever wanted to seek a career beyond that of a performer, he would not be found scholastically wanting. When he eventually came up on the radar of SHIELD's recruiting department, it had been to his distinct advantage to show that his incredible aim was not his only useful skill. Now, he was able to fully appreciate the fact that it was the best thing that could have happened to him.

"It was a lot of fun," he said nostalgically. "I highly recommend running away to join the circus. See the world, meet interesting people, perform death-defying acts…"

"When you put it that way, I think I may have already joined the circus," she laughed.

"Nah, most circuses have fewer clowns."

"If you're about to start again on the last batch of recruits, you can stop right there," she warned. "You've been going on about them all week, and I can't believe they could possibly be as bad as you seem to think."

"You didn't see them, Tasha! It was an embarrassment. I'm not asking them to be as talented as you, but a detectable level of competence would be appreciated."

"I'll check them out when we get back day after tomorrow, but I'm still saying that Fury would not take them on if they were really as bad as all that. You did see them right after we found out we had been kicked off the Bahamas job. Are you sure you weren't being a bit harsh?"

"It may be possible," Clint admitted begrudgingly, "that my initial assessment might – I only say 'might' – have been influenced by my mood. However, in my defense, I was not actually referring to the recruits when I spoke of the clowns."

"No?"

"No," Clint said firmly. "I was, in point of fact, referring to the Council."

"Oh," Natasha said, rather mollified. "Well then, I apologize for jumping to conclusions."

There was no love lost between the partnership and the World Security Council. The Council had not been pleased to discover that Fury had actually added the infamous Black Widow to the list of employees shortly after they had decided that she needed to be terminated and that he had done so without so much as a 'by your leave.' They had spent her first two years in SHIELD scrutinizing not only her every move, but Clint's as well, making it clear that they considered his judgments regarding Natasha Romanoff as suspect.

"I'll bet they waited until we were up for the job on a tropical island before they started harping on our failure to recertify," Clint said conspiratorially. "They could have said something before the last mission when we were headed to Norway in January, a place where the training might have actually been necessary."

Natasha was about to say that surely the Council couldn't be that petty, especially considering all the good work they had done, but then she remembered not to underestimate the capacity some people had for being resentful, especially when proved wrong. "We really could have used a nice trip to somewhere warm and beautiful," she said wistfully, "even if we did have to work. So much for that. Do you know what we're scheduled for when we get back? It was domestic, wasn't it?" When he didn't answer, she turned her head. "Clint?"

"You know," he said as though he were just thinking out loud, "I've got a little house in the Florida Keys."

Natasha sat bolt upright despite the cold. "Really? How did I not know about this?" she demanded.

"I bought it years ago as a vacation home. I bought it on a whim when I got a check for my hazard pay after a particularly hazardous month. It's a really small, only five rooms in the whole thing. I took a week off to move some furniture in and spend some time in the area, but I've only managed to get back once since I bought it. That was ages ago."

"You own any other pieces of real estate that you never get to see?" she asked, laying back down and pulling the cover back over her in order to save what little warmth she hadn't lost in her outburst.

"Just the one," he assured her. "After we get out of this ice box, we ought to go visit my poor, abandoned house for a few days to thaw out. It's in walking distance of a beach and surrounded by seafood places."

"Trust me, when I tell you that you do not have to talk me into it. I'll cry if you don't let me come." Then, as an afterthought, she added, "After I kick you, of course."

"Of course," Clint said, agreeing that such a circumstance would merit the violence from his associate. "When do we get some leave?"

"Not until the end of March," Tasha said sadly. "We get Christmas off this year, but at the cost of Easter and Thanksgiving. We can take off after the Easter weekend, assuming nothing comes up."

"At least Easter is early this year," he said, "and maybe, if we ask God really nicely, nothing will come up."

"Favors are one thing, but I'm not sure that God provides miracles just so that we can have a vacation," Natasha mused.

"I can hope," he staunchly asserted.

There was a lull in the conversation, and they listened to the wind whistle through the surrounding pine trees until Natasha spoke again. "Hey, Clint?"

"Yeah?"

"What's the temperature like in the Florida Keys right now?" she asked through teeth that were clinched to prevent them from chattering.

"Well, considering that it's 0100 hours there right now, I'd guess that it would only be in the sixties, but I think it might actually get up in the eighties during the day."

"Just sixty?" she said sardonically. "It sounds wonderful to me."

"Nat, are you actually shivering?" Clint asked in disbelief. She could tell by his tone that he was laughing at her.

"Oh, shut up," Natasha snapped, giving up on her fight to suppress her chattering teeth.

Clint sighed theatrically and scooted up next to her, throwing a leg over her frozen feet. "How on earth did you manage to survive childhood in a country that is notorious for harsh winters?"

"To begin with, my parents loved me enough to not make me get certified in winter survival, and I believe that central heating also helped," she bit back, leaning into her partner in a shameless bid for warmth.

It was another minute before she spoke again, and this time her tone was more genial. "Thanks," she said, her voice no longer shaking with cold.

"That's all right. If you freeze to death, I'll have to do this all over again," he teased. "Let's get some sleep, and tomorrow, if it's not too terrible, we can try to power through the last couple of miles."

By the time they woke up, the storm had abated sufficiently to allow them to complete the rest of their trek to the safe-house - a simple, but sturdily built cabin - that was well stocked with firewood, much to Natasha's relief. Even though it took them twice the time that it would have taken in the absence of the blizzard, they still made it nearly two days ahead of schedule which should have gotten them home that much sooner, but, in the end, it didn't matter.

The weather conditions continued to be so harsh that it was an additional two days past the original deadline before SHIELD could transport them out of the area. By that time, the agents were going a little stir-crazy from being cooped-up in a structure that was not even 200 feet square for almost four solid days, cold, uncomfortable, and bored. The cabin didn't have so much as a trashy romance novel for reading material. For a while, they tried to play chess using little odds and ends as pieces and carving the lines of a game board on the wooden floor with a pocket knife, but as none of the pieces were uniform, they were constantly losing track of what each piece was supposed to be. After they had to scrap their third attempt, they just simplified to checkers.

While they played, they made plans for their proposed vacation to warmer climes. They talked about swimming in the ocean and lying on the beach and going boating, among many other things. At one time, they even debated the merits of taking a couple of days to go to Disneyworld, but that didn't get very far because neither was quite willing to admit how much they actually liked the idea. After a while, the game play had subsided, and they just sat around, dreaming aloud about the kind of things they would like to have done in the cities and countries they had been to while working.

By the end of the third day, they were agreed that they really didn't care where they went after this trip as long as they could get out of the damned cabin. As it turned out, the field agents' anxiety to return to headquarters was nothing to the anxiety of their handler to have them back. Coulson, deprived of his two top field agents for an additional forty-eight hours over the two weeks he had already been forced to endure, had been pushed to his limit. They had barely touched down on the tarmac when he told his agents that they had six hours to get ready for their next assignment.

Much to their disappointment, the world's worst criminals could not see their way clear to allowing Clint and Natasha enough time for a proper break, and, they did have to postpone their trip to an undetermined future date. However, it never occurred to them that they wouldn't make the trip eventually, even if it had to be rescheduled more times than their survival recertification.

Some things were actually important.


End file.
